1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a new and useful measuring instrument for simplifying the task of making appearance measurements of objects such as products of manufacture, foodstuffs and the like.
More specifically, the invention relates to a novel combined scanning spectrophotometer-microcomputer digital data processing system for processing, storing and performing fast computations with respect to digital data signals supplied from the scanning spectrophotometer sensor head to thereby quickly and easily calibrate (standardize) the instrument relative to predetermined appearance standards and for deriving a wide variety of output measurements in the form of visual displays, printed alpha numeric characters, graphs, or the like which are representative of the color and certain spatial properties of test specimen objects whose appearance is to be measured.
2. Prior Art Situation
In the textbook entitled "The Measurement of Appearance" by Richard S. Hunter, published by John Wiley & Sons, Publishers, New York, N.Y. - 1975, the manner and means by which measurements are made to determine human visual responses to the appearance of different objects, is described in detail. In this textbook a wide variety of different instruments is described for measuring either of the two main categories of appearance attributes, namely color, and the geometric attributes or properties of light emanating from an object being observed exemplified by reflection, transmission, haze, opacity, etc. To operate these instruments and obtain any degree of accuracy in the results requires skill. In addition, in order to derive meaningful information concerning the appearance of an object, a relatively large inventory of such different instruments would have to be maintained together with a suitable computation center capable of analyzing and processing the results of measurements obtained from the different instruments. In order to reduce the number of different types of measuring instruments that one has to maintain as well as the need for a separate computation facility in order to perform meaningful appearance measurements with respect to manufactured products or other objects, the present invention was devised.